Chengdu, China's fourth city to host Global Fortune Forum
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E-mail China Daily, June 5, 2013
The Global Fortune Forum will be held in Chengdu in 2013. As the fourth Chinese city to host the forum, Chengdu has attracted international attention.
FDI, a Financial Times magazine in Britain, has released a 12-page investigative report about Chengdu. The report highlights Chengdu as "an important engine driving future development".
Chengdu is the only inland city in China included in the 2011 and 2012 "Annual Top 10 Best Foreign Investment Strategy Cities in Asia and the Pacific Region" list. Yang Jirui, president of Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone Development Research Institute of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, thinks Chengdu deserves the honor.
According to Yang, Chengdu was the first city to develop in southwest China. It has become the central city in the region and a domestic and international focus point because of its rich talent reserve and favorable investment environment. To date, 215 Fortune Global 500 enterprises have settled in Chengdu. Next year's Global Fortune Forum will help Chengdu become a more influential exhibition city across the globe.
Sheng Yi, deputy president of the Sichuan Social Sciences Academy, believes Chengdu's transformation into a leisure capital and Global Fortune Forum host is due to its great urban competitiveness and comprehensive strength.
"Chengdu has geographical advantages and favorable climate conditions in addition to an abundance of talent. It has a concentration of electronic information and equipment manufacturing companies. Many large enterprises have settled in Chengdu. Chengdu has taken the lead across China in the past 10 years in building a standardized service-oriented government," says Sheng Yi.
"Chengdu impresses me the most with its abundant talent resources", says Shao Wei, senior executive director of Maersk Information Processing (Chengdu) Co Ltd. Chengdu is extremely competitive thanks to its rich higher learning institutions and abundant talent. In addition, Chengdu's livability helps it retain and attract talent.
However, Shao also points out that Chengdu is now encountering a "bottleneck" in talent, namely, the lack of senior management. He says, "There are many excellent workers in Chengdu but few are competent for management positions and it is necessary to recruit many managers from Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou. The largest gap lies in experience and it takes time to accumulate that." Shao says his company will offer relevant talent training programs with respect to this issue and provide more training opportunities for Chengdu employees. For Intel, it was risky to select Chengdu as a base in 2003 because Chengdu did not completely meet their requirements. Ge Jun, executive director of Intel China, says, "Looking back 10 years later, we not only made the correct decision but continue to be surprised by Chengdu."
He says that Chengdu has managed to build a complete IT industry chain, with Intel serving as an important link. Half of all laptop computers around the globe use chips made in Chengdu. He says Intel will continue to increase investment and carry out business in Chengdu.
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